The EconomistFebruary 29th 2020 Europe 432 chatrooms, racist memes and the misogy-
nistic subculture of “incel” (“involuntary
celibacy”), broadcast his attack live on
Twitch, an American video-streaming
gaming website, and chose to deliver his
anti-Semitic diatribes and obscure online
references in English. He sought to inspire
others abroad, just as he had been motivat-
ed by comparable attacks in El Paso and
Christchurch. At a candlelit vigil after the
Hanau attacks, protesters chanted Nazis
raus!(“Nazis out!”), a common response to
far-right atrocities in Germany. Yet the re-
cent attacks look less like a specific nation-
al concern than local instances of an over-
lapping set of transnational phenomena.
That creates problems for the domestic
intelligence services. Having long relied on
American and British spooks to alert them
to online transgressions, Germany’s
underresourced security apparatus re-
mains woefully ill-equipped to manage in-
ternet-based radicalisation, says Mr Koeh-
ler. There are plans to expand the powers of
agencies, and to set up an early-warning
system for right-wing radicals. A bill
agreed by the cabinet shortly before the Ha-
nau attack would oblige platforms like Fa-
cebook to report illegal content. But it is
not clear that any of this would have pulled
the Halle or Hanau perpetrators from their
shadowy, global online underworld.
Protesters have found a more visible
target in the Alternative for Germany (afd),
a far-right party that one Green has called
“the political arm of hate”. The afdvigor-
ously rebuts any claim that it bears part of
the blame for right-wing terror. Yet some of
its officials, especially in eastern Germany,
routinely deploy the sort of racist, quasi-
apocalyptic imagery found in the darker
reaches of the internet. Björn Höcke, leader
of the afd’s extremist Flügel (“Wing”)
grouping and head of the party’s branch in
Thuringia, uses language so incendiary
that a court has ruled he may be described
as “fascist” without fear of legal conse-
quence. Right-wing terrorists “want to be
the hero of a movement,” says Mr Dittrich,
“and the afdplays a role in normalising
their ideas”. A poll found that 60% of Ger-
mans held it partly responsible for Hanau.
The afdhas also, says Mr Koehler, “dis-
solved social boundaries between extrem-
ist societies and the conservative right.” On
one hand it pals around with radical groups
like the Identitarian Movement and Pe-
gida, an Islamophobic outfit whose bi-
weekly event Mr Höcke recently addressed
in Dresden. On the other, says Valentin
Hacken, from Halle Gegen Rechts, a cam-
paigning group, it drags mainstream con-
servatism in its direction. The Thuringian
branch of the centre-right Christian Demo-
crats recently voted with Mr Höcke to eject
the state’s left-wing government, trigger-ing a scandal that has upended German
politics. All this, as Mr Diaby’s staff testify,
opens the door to ideas and language that
were once considered taboo.
For all that, the afdis a legal party that
holds seats in all 16 of Germany’s state par-
liaments, plus the Bundestag. Its ideas will
have to be tackled in democratic debate
rather than through policing and suppres-
sion. Extremists in countries like New Zea-
land have proved perfectly capable of find-
ing motivation for killing sprees without
the spur of far-right parties in parliament.
Germany’s history gives the country a spe-
cial responsibility to tackle right-wing ex-
tremism in all its forms. But that does not
isolate it from threats that look increasing-
ly international in character.^7Not like the others
Far-right severe violent incidents
Selected countries, 2016-18Source: Centre for Research on Extremism, University of OsloPortugalNorwaySwitzerlandNetherlandsAustriaFinlandSwedenSpainFranceBritainItalyGreeceGermany806040200Totalincidents
Fatal incidentsS
ince saintsaresorareinthemodern
world, they are elaborately treasured.
When Jean Vanier died in May 2019 he
drew praise and admiration from all
sides, including Pope Francis, prominent
American clergy—and The Economist. He
had founded a network of small house-
based communities, known as L’Arche
(The Ark), in which people with dis-
abilities and those without ate, lived,
worked and prayed together. There are
now 154 such communities around the
world. Their humane approach to care
has been widely copied.
Yet as much as Vanier’s concept, his
personality inspired people. Here was a
Canadian academic, with no training,
who built up L’Arche after 1964 from one
derelict house at Trosly-Breuil, in north-
ern France, because he felt Jesus asked it
of him. In his habits of asceticism, joy-
fulness and prayer he seemed a model of
holiness for lay men and women. He
wrote of how the simple goodness of his
charges inspired him, too, to be a better
man. But all this hid another life, which
has now been exposed in a report by
L’Arche International itself.
It now appears that for more than 30
years, from 1970 to 2005, Vanier had
sexual relationships with at least six
women that were “manipulative”, “coer-
cive” or “non-consensual”. Some, it is
said, were workers at L’Arche; some were
nuns. His hold over them was emotional
and psychological; the encounters were
dressed up as mystical or spiritual expe-
riences, as “Jesus and Mary”, and were
“special”, not to be revealed. So powerful
was his personality, as well as the regard
of outsiders for him, that even after hisdeaththewomenhesitated to speak out.
Now that they have, it is clear that
Vanier followed the lead of Fr Thomas
Philippe, the man who had encouraged
him to come to Trosly-Breuil and found
L’Arche in the first place. Philippe, his
spiritual mentor, had long indulged in
“deviant theories and practices”; again, it
was L’Arche itself that exposed this, more
than two decades after his death in 1993.
Vanier, at L’Arche, joined in.
When Philippe’s perversions came to
public attention in 2015, Vanier wrote to
his followers about them. The revela-
tions, he said, “hit me like a terrible
storm”. He had been “totally in the dark”;
he could “only weep” with the victims,
and say “I do not understand.” Alas, he
understood all too well.Feet of clay
Jean VanierScandal topples the reputation of the founder of L’ArcheNot what he seemed